mission: find matzah in time for passover
It was truly an amazing saga and in the end we had to rely on the kindness of strangers. I expected to search for chametz (unleavened bread) as part of getting my home ready for passover. Then later help my son look for the affikomen (half the middle matzah) needed to end the seder and start dessert. Never did I dream I'd need to scour the bay area for matzah. It seemed a conspiracy. Who was buying up all the matzah? Granted I'd waited until the last minute, but it was never an issue before. Usually the stores end up with lots of extra and have trouble giving it away. My partner wanted whole wheat matzah- cardboard really, but getting one box of any kind was truly a miracle. My mother in law mentioned they had no shortage in her area and even had grape flavored, which seems like blueberry bagels, a bizarre rebellion against tradition.
Apparently, a major supplier had machinery problems and was not able to produce enough matzah. This is like having no pumpkins at Halloween, no jellybeans at Easter or even no oil at Hanukah. How far would you travel to find some to observe a holiday properly?
After striking out at two local grocery stores, I went online and then called about 12 stores in SF and down the peninsula as far as Millbrae. Thinking I'd struck gold, a woman at Mollie Stone's said they only had egg matzah left and would put a box aside for me so I could get down there. However when she went to do it, learned they were all sold out. Half the people I called had no idea what matzah was and I had to explain & spell it. Turns out none of those stores carried it anyway. Trader Joe's & Costco decided not to carry it this year, but their personnel knew what it was. Smart & Final were not so smart & I tried 2 stores thinking perhaps I'd just reached one clueless worker, but alas neither one got it. My partner mentioned Target had it, but that was a total miss. The guy I spoke to suggested I look in the cracker aisle before he looked it up (after I spelled it) and discovered it was not in their computer.
I bought a two packs of Kedem cookies that were on sale and located with the passover items at safeway. Chocolate & vanilla tea biscuits did not seem like a proper bread of affliction, but they were the first solid bits I found and I was getting desperate. Unfortunately when I got home we realized that they were kosher, but not for passover- the writing was rubbed off, I saw bicarbonate as an ingredient, which is an agent used to make food rise and a no no for passover. So I had to hide them away with our other chametz.
I did find tiny matzah crackers at Andronicos 2" by 2" & thought that would be it, perfect for Hillel sandwiches (matzah, horseradish and charosets (red wine, chopped apples, chopped walnuts, cinnamon and honey). I could not find any potato starch or matzah meal to bake other stuff for the holiday. I did locate some cake meal, matzah ball mix for our chicken soup, gefilte fish, juice and wine. These were the flavors and foods of my childhood so I felt a little better. Thankfully my partner got lucky in a supermarket parking lot with box of Yehuda's. A lovely Russian woman looking for more passover products for her seder had an extra box in her car and gave it to her as a good deed (mitzvah). I wondered at her keeping it in the car, but decided perhaps she hadn't koshered her home yet for passover so didn't want to bring it inside until her home was rid of its leavened bread, etc. The notion that folks would drive around helping Jews score matzah seemed a stretch. I imagined someone buying up all the matzah and driving the price up and then selling it to make a profit. How would you distribute it? Craigslist? Street corners? Blackmarket matzah, the new carb.
We had a nice seder and had two folks who'd never been to a seder join us. We fulfilled our obligation to tell the passover story of the Exodus and ate too much. Hopefully we'll have enough matzah to last out a week. If not I might need to have a box shipped to me. Next year I'll buy early.